Darl Sets the Barn on Fire — As I Lay Dying

The loft takes fire at once, soundless, as though stuffed with powder, Darl says, and the coffin on sawhorses in the doorway stands like a cubistic bug in the conical glare. Jewel materializes in underclothes with furious unbelief on his face, sees Darl without turning, and leaps toward the barn. Quick, Darl shouts, the horses, while flames sound like thunder and a horse screams in the stalls like an interminable train on an endless trestle.

Jewel pauses at the coffin glaring at Darl, then drags the horse out by its head, muscles ridged, lifted clear off the ground. Darl tells Mack nightshirt around his head and the mule goes docile. Jewel splinters the rear wall with a milking stool so the cow bolts through. When Jewel turns back into the barn Darl grabs at him. You fool, he says, don't you see you can't make it back yonder?

Jewel fights Gillespie, runs into the rain of burning hay, and upends Addie's coffin single-handed from the sawhorses. It looms tall, topples through sparks, and Jewel rides it clinging in a thin nimbus of fire until the box flings him clear. Mack leaps into a smell of scorching meat and slaps at crimson-edged holes blooming in his undershirt. Will Vardaman watch the barn swirl red while Cash's cement leg turns black and everyone asks where Darl went?